This week in People With LGBTQ Parents Doing Cool Things: Paralympian Tatyana McFadden, the most decorated U.S. track and field athlete in history, won the Amateur Athletic Union’s Sullivan Award, given annually since 1930 to “the most outstanding athlete” at an elite level in the United States. She was also raised by two moms.
“In addition to athletic excellence,” said the AAU in a press release, “the Sullivan Award recognizes the qualities of leadership, citizenship, character, and sportsmanship on and off the playing surface.”
McFadden’s career includes 16 World Championships and 24 total World Champion medals. At the Paralympic Games, she has won 8 gold, 9 silver, and 5 bronze medals, most recently at the 2024 Paris Games, at every distance from 100 meters to the marathon, and including a silver in cross-country skiing at the 2014 Winter Paralympics (her only Winter Paralympics). She has had 24 Abbott World Major Marathon wins that include four consecutive Grand Slams (first place in Boston, Chicago, NYC and London marathons in the same year)—and she was the first person of any gender, able-bodied or disabled, to win a Grand Slam (2013).
As a child, McFadden was adopted from an orphanage in Russia by Deborah McFadden and Bridget O’Shaughnessy, a couple from the U.S. Deborah had also been a competitive athlete and born with a disability. Deborah’s advocacy for people with disabilities led President George H. W. Bush to appoint her United States commissioner of disabilities in 1989, where she helped write the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was on a business trip to Russia when she first met Tatyana and felt a bond with the girl, who had been born with spina bifida.
Back in the United States, Tatyana tried many sports but loved wheelchair racing. She entered her first Paralympics in 2004 at age 15, and returned with a silver and a bronze medal. Her high school track team, however, would not allow her to compete with standing athletes, so she and Deborah advocated for the 2008 passage of “Tatyana’s Law,” or the Maryland Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities Act, which ensures equal athletic opportunities for students with disabilities.
The AAU noted this advocacy as part of the reason for giving McFadden the Sullivan Award. She is only the second Paralympian to receive the honor; the first was swimmer Jessica Long in 2006. Other winners include Caitlin Clark (basketball, 2023), Simone Biles (gymnastics, 2020), Michael Phelps (swimming, 2003), Peyton Manning (football, 1997), Florence Griffith Joyner (track, 1988), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (track, 1986), Carl Lewis (track, 1981), and Wilma Rudolph (track, 1961). Other top finalists for this year’s award included Alysa Liu (figure skating), Azzi Fudd (basketball), and Mikaela Shiffrin (skiing).
I hope to be remembered as part of the change in the Paralympic community and the marathon community, bringing equality to the games and communities. Sports have such a big power and voice.
“I hope to be remembered as part of the change in the Paralympic community and the marathon community, bringing equality to the games and communities,” said McFadden during the award ceremony on April 7. “Sports have such a big power and voice.”
McFadden also has a master’s degree in education and an undergraduate degree in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana. She is active as an advocate for healthy lifestyles thorough sports and nutrition, volunteering with Move United (a para-sports program) and Stop the Clot (to help individuals with blood clotting disorders), and is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts.
McFadden continues to be actively involved in advancing the rights of people with disabilities, and speaks regularly about her experiences with disability, adoption, and being an elite athlete. She spoke last month at the United Nations’ Women Breaking Barriers event (see video at 16:00), and explained how girls and women with disabilities are two to three times more likely to endure abuse than the general population because they appear more vulnerable. She has experienced such violence firsthand, she said, enduring abuse at the hands of the staff in the Russian orphanage where she was a young child. “We all share responsibility for making this world for all women and girls, yes,” she told the audience. “But most importantly, those with disabilities who have no voice and are so easily and so often forgotten.”
When she became the winningest U.S. track and field athlete in 2024, she said in a press statement, “The best advice I can give for the next generation is that life isn’t about what we don’t have, but what we do with the gifts we’re given.”
Anyone who says LGBTQ parents can’t help kids thrive hasn’t been paying attention. Not all of us will raise Paralympians or Olympians (and nor should we pressure our kids to achieve just to validate our worth as parents), but we raise our kids as well (and as imperfectly) as any other parents—and sometimes, yes, our kids do cool stuff.
If you’d like to share McFadden’s story with the young people in your life, I recommend the picture book biography Fastest Woman on Earth: The Story of Tatyana McFadden, by Francesca Cavallo, illustrated by Luis San Vicente (Undercats), with an introduction by Deborah.